What is happening? i need your help!
Hi everyone
I followed very carefully a recipe to make chocolate croissants. I was very proud to see how they looked when they came out off the oven, but I sliced them in half and you can see why I need your help
Here is what I did:
1. I mixed some water and the yeast and some of the flour, let it rest for 1/2 hour to make a "polish"
2. I add the rest of the flour, the the sugar, milk, butter and salt, let i rest for 1 hour, and overnight in the fridge
3. I incorporate the butter and did 3 "tourage" with 1 hour rest in the fridge between each "tourage"
4. I shaped the chocolate croissants, the dough is about 1/4" thick
5. I proofed in a proffer with humidity at about 80 degrees for 2 hours
6. I baked them in a convection oven at 400 degree for 12 min.
Any thoughts? Thank you
Comments
Only thing I can think of did the dough have enough room temp time for the yeast to be active enough? Without the recipe with each ingredient by weight it'll be difficult to tell why. 1/2 hour for a poolish seems not long enough. When you let the final dough rest for one hour how well had it risen? After that it's basically all fridge time, apart from final proofing.
You might be right, the dough didn't seem to develop a lot at room temperature after 1 hour.
the recipe call for:
poolish: 20g fresh yeast, 110g water, 75g flour
dough: 475g flour, 170g whole milk, 40g sugar, 110 g butter, 12g salt
Butter for tourage: 350g
First of all, a poolish is a pre-ferment used in, say, baguettes to develop flavour and dough strength. It's made with a tiny proportion of the overall yeast and usually ferments for anywhere from 12-16 hours. It is really not needed for croissant dough. If anything, you want to minimal gluten development.
Next, all that milk is unnecessary, you get more than enough fat from the butter, and unless you're using osmotolerant yeast, you're adding to your difficulties. Water is fine. If you doubt what I'm saying check out a few French recipes for butter croissants.
Tourage is the process of lamination. And you're obviously doing enough folds to get a decent lamination, although most patissieres would do double turn/simple turn/simple/double; four turns in total.
Looking at your photo, your immediate problem seems likely to be one of two reasons. Or both. First, that you've over-proved. The egg-wash has held up the skin admirably, but the yeast in the dough was too exhausted to maintain a cell structure and it has collapsed. Not being a slave to timings in a recipe is the trick. When the croissant feels soft and puffy to the touch, it's ready. That could easily be in half the time the recipe suggests. Or twice. It's a matter of baking when the dough says its ready, not when the clock does.
Alternatively, the swiftest way to create flat, stodgy croissants is to use butter with too low a percentage fat. Or salted butter. Or both. Unsalted butter is important because the salted variety retains too much water which turns the croissant soggy during baking. Ditto with the percentage butter fat. You need a minimum of 82% butter fat for reliably good butter croissants. It really should be 84-86%. Check the ingredients break-down on your butter label. Here, in Europe, it's easy to buy this kind of butter, but I know from experience it's much harder to find in North America. I don't know where you are in the world, but if you cannot find 82% or higher unsalted, try tracking down a local organic dairy farm and see if they make some for you or perhaps suggest where you could find some.
Finally, don't despair. It is really hard to get croissants right the first few times. The first I ever baked were flat as pancakes.
Before your next batch, look around YouTube for croissant-making demonstrations. But only ones by French patissieres. There are a lot of awful videos and its a good way to filter them out. Go for demos by recognized experts (Bruno Albouz is a good place to start), not people bumbling along at home with non-traditional recipes. There's a reason why the tradition exists. It works. :)
I disagree on several points.
1. Poolish is often used for making croissants, but not always. But often.
2. Milk is fine to use. I use milk and many others do, too. It is not absolutely necessary, however.
3. For the OP: I agree that it may have been over proofed. Either way, the advice in that paragraph is sound.
4. I disagree about butterfat content. I have long heard about this and I have heard all the rationale. I use exclusively 80% butterfat and my customers constantly rave about my croissants. Euro butter is easier to work with, but is far from essential.
5. Absolutely agree with this: Finally, don't despair. It is really hard to get croissants right the first few times. The first I ever baked were flat as pancakes.
6. Love Bruno Albouze's croissant video (and his other videos). Have you ever dreamed of being served...croissants...in a hotel room in Paris?
Basis for my dissent: I have baked around 15000 croissants in the last 18 months and this is from my experience.
..if I do the same, maybe we'll shrink this to a vanishing point.
1. A poolish is not necessary. It's irrelevant. Making one is not going to any harm. But why make extra work?
2. Milk. As far I can tell, it's a North American thing. I'd never come across it in croissants until I visited the States. Maybe I'm wrong about that but, again, although you really don't need it, it doesn't do any harm either. And it's not really the issue with these croissants. For me, it's just a warning sign that a recipe or formula might not be very reliable.
4. Butterfat. Yes, you can even make croissants from margarine. Half those for sale in France appear to be. Commercial lamination definitely accommodates lower butter fat. But for the home baker, I do wonder about the wisdom of it. I've seen so many sad home-made CRX made with low butterfat that I, personally, would never recommend it. And this is advice from someone who made his first croissants (with ordinary butter) forty years ago and discovered immediately the drawback: they were truly terrible specimens.
fill with a great pudding and whipped cream. Pile it on, I'll be there to eat them up! :)
It seems that the quantity of butter for both the dough and the tourage was too great for the yeast to handle
I reduced the butter quantity from:
110g to 50g for the dough
350g to 250g for the tourage
Thank for yours comments!!